A Vampyre Story is about Mona De Lafitte an opera singer from Paris whose life was ended by a vampire named Shrowdy Von Kiefer. Shrowdy is smitten with Mona as she reminds him of his long lost mother. Mona is in denial that she is in fact a vampire and is held captive in his enchanted castle in Draxsylvania. Once Mona and her comedic sidekick bat, Froderick, hear about Shrowdy’s demise, they are anxious to escape from his castle and head back to Paris. Can they make it before the sun comes out?

Like many adventure games, you’ll have to examine your surroundings and collect various objects to help you along your journey. Make sure you touch and talk to everyone and everything. There are many inanimate objects that do have voices and information needed to help you along. At the very least you’ll get a humorous retort from Mona or Froderick.

The environments are very colorful and detailed. You’ll be exploring the castle, dungeons and walking through Victorian style towns. This game makes you feel like you’re in a cartoon. It’s usually pretty easy to tell what objects have a purpose as your mouse cursor lights up when you move past them. Some of the objects are not as obvious though.

The puzzles vary in complexity. Some of them are easy such as using a boomerang to knock off the string of garlic hanging by someone’s doorway. I had to consult a walkthrough to help me out through some of the other puzzles, especially the ones involving making the various potions needed. The quests are usually pretty entertaining and you’ll sometimes find an easier solution to a problem after you’ve done all the hard work already.

This game is very funny but the humor is juvenile and often has sexual references and mild swearing. There are tributes and references to many popular movies and TV shows. For example when you’re looking through some rectangular objects in a library (Mona doesn’t know how to read or know what books are), one of the funnier titles was How to Survive in the Wilderness on 2 Pints of Blood. You’ll also encounter some rats that have mobster ties and they mention that they haven’t seen one of their cousins since he found a cookbook. Another reference I recognized was that Ozzy the water fountain talks just like Ozzie Osbourne.

The voice acting is superb in this game. The character voices and accents are great. Mona has a French accent and one of the people you meet in town is from Jersey and has a blunt personality and a fitting accent. The background music completes the game and the sound effects are good too.

When it comes to stability, I encountered a couple glitches. If you’re running Windows Vista, you’ll have to run the game as an administrator or else it will crash to the desktop right away. Lastly, one of the characters is standing up when they shouldn’t be after you drain their blood a bit. After you collect his badge from his unconscious body, he’s back on the ground again where he belongs. To get the actual badge itself you have to click on the ground where it should have been. There is a patch for the game, but this issue is unresolved.

This was a very enjoyable game to play. I didn’t like the abrupt ending, clearly they are planning a sequel for this game. I look forward to checking that out. You can purchase A Vampyre Story from Gamer’s Gate for $30. If you like funny adventure games like Grim Fandango, then you’ll enjoy this.

Game Play 18/20Graphics 8/10Sound 9/10Interface 4/5Stability 4/5Appropriateness 36/50-2.5 for non-deadly violence-1 for blood-2.5 for swearing-3.5 for sexual references-3 for occult references-1.5 for gross humor Overall 79%